Books

Kunnen We Praten (Can We Talk)

Joris Luyendijk, bestselling author of Swimming with Sharks, is conducting an experiment to bring populist voters into conversation with members of the conventional liberal circle to which he belongs.

2016 revealed how we are all trapped in our own echo chambers. The question is how do we get out of them and start talking to each other again?

Joris’ experiment will show whether and where we overlap and how we could reconnect to ask and explore the big questions that neither populists nor the technocratic political elites seem prepared to address.

Kunnen We Praten (Can We Talk), published in the Netherlands by Atlas Contact on 24th February, was written by Luyendijk to initiate his experiment, which took place in the three weeks preceding the Dutch general election. At the same time, the current affairs website decorrespondent.nl collaborated with Algemeen Dagblad, to allow Joris to engage with the populist voters.

Joris’ interaction with populist voters follows the same three-part structure of Kunnen We Praten: 1) Why I would vote populist 2) Why in spite of this I would never vote populist, 3) What do we do now?

After three weeks of interaction, the author has started writing about the most relevant, important and interesting results.